All the Ways to Sway: Exploring and Creating More Complex Persuasive Texts
English
Level 6Level 7Level 8
What is this sequence about?
This learning sequence aims to develop student understanding of persuasive language, focussing on the way punctuation, vocabulary and sentence complexity can contribute to a compelling argument. It aims to equip students with the skills to engage critically with their world by developing a persuasive metalanguage and exploring what makes a text cohesive. The sequence aims to equip students with the skills to read critically and provides opportunities for students to explore a range of contemporary issues by engaging with multimodal texts.
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Big understandings Using persuasive language features including vocabulary, punctuation and sentence structure can help build a compelling argument that persuades and influences the way others think, feel and act. Identifying and understanding persuasive language features helps us to become more critically literate readers. |
The sequence has been written by teachers for teachers. It has been designed to provide students with rich, engaging learning experiences that address the Victorian Curriculum. The sequence consists of four flexible stages, including suggested learning intentions.
Overview of stages
1. How and Why Do We Persuade?
Suggested Learning Intentions
- To explore the purposes of persuasive texts
- To understand how vocabulary is used to persuade in extended and academic texts
- To understand the function of abstract nouns in persuasive texts
3. The Structure and Features of Persuasive Texts
Suggested Learning Intentions
- To understand how text structures and language features become more complex in persuasive texts
- To understand that the coherence of more complex texts relies on devices that create structure
2. Creating Persuasive Sentences
Suggested Learning Intentions
- To understand how punctuation is used to support meaning in complex sentences
- To understand how subordinate clauses are used to communicate in-depth information
4. Modality and Meaning
Suggested Learning Intentions
- To co-construct a persuasive text
- To understand how modality is achieved using modal verbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns
Prior knowledge
Before you commence this sequence, it is suggested that you ensure your students are familiar with:
- Metaphor
- Paragraphing
- Topic sentences
- Inference
You can find support for building students’ understanding of some of these concepts in the Literacy Teaching Toolkit.
Teaching strategies
The Literacy Teaching Toolkit provides advice on the teaching strategies that you could use in this sequence. These strategies include:
The sequence highlights opportunities to apply the High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS), which are a component of the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model.
Vocabulary
Students should be able to understand and use the following concepts and terms by the end of the learning sequence:
| Extended metaphor | Inference |
| Abstract noun | Subordinate clause |
| Modality | Embedded clause |
| Taxonomy |
You can find definitions of some of these terms in the Literacy Teaching Toolkit and the Glossary for the English Curriculum.
It is recommended that the explicit teaching of vocabulary occur throughout this learning sequence. The Literacy Teaching Toolkit provides resources and sample activities to support this practice.
Assessment
Opportunities for formative and summative assessment are identified at different stages of the learning sequence. Look for the 'Assessment Opportunity' icon.
You may want to develop a rubric to assess students’ progress. A range of Formative Assessment resources are available from the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. This includes a Guide to Formative Assessment Rubrics, a series of modules to support you to develop your own formative assessment rubrics, and sample rubrics across six curriculum areas that demonstrate how you can put formative assessment rubrics into practice in the classroom.
When developing a rubric, you may wish to co-construct assessment criteria with your students. Each stage of the sequence provides sample success criteria for students working at Level 7.
The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority has published work samples that provide teachers with examples of student learning achievement in each mode of the English curriculum: Reading and Viewing, Writing, Speaking and Listening.
Victorian Curriculum connections
Level 6
This sequence addresses content from the Victorian Curriculum in English. It is primarily designed for Level 7, but also addresses the following content descriptions from Level 6:
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Content description |
Stage |
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English: Reading and Viewing |
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Understand how authors often innovate on text structures and play with language features to achieve particular aesthetic, humorous and persuasive purposes and effects (VCELA339) |
How and Why Do We Persuade? |
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Select, navigate and read increasingly complex texts for a range of purposes, applying appropriate text processing strategies to recall information and consolidate meaning (VCELY346) |
How and Why Do We Persuade? Creating Persuasive Sentences The Structure and Features of Persuasive Texts |
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English: Writing |
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Investigate how vocabulary choices, including evaluative language can express shades of meaning, feeling and opinion (VCELA352) |
Modality and Meaning |
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Understand that cohesive links can be made in texts by omitting or replacing words (VCELA348) |
The Structure and Features of Persuasive Texts |
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Understand the uses of commas to separate clauses (VCELA349) |
Creating Persuasive Sentences |
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Understand how ideas can be expanded and sharpened through careful choice of verbs, elaborated tenses and a range of adverb groups/phrases (VCELA351) |
Modality and Meaning |
The sequence can be used to assess student achievement in relation to the following Achievement Standards from the Victorian Curriculum: English Level 6:
- Students understand how the use of text structures can achieve particular effects.
- Students can analyse and explain how language features, images and vocabulary are used by different authors to represent ideas, characters and events.
- Students understand how language features and language patterns can be used for emphasis.
- Students demonstrate understanding of grammar and make considered choices from an expanding vocabulary to enhance cohesion and structure in their writing.
- Students listen to discussions, clarifying content and challenging others’ ideas.
Level 7
This sequence addresses content from the Victorian Curriculum in English. It is primarily designed for Level 7 and addresses the following content descriptions:
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Content description |
Stage |
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English: Reading and Viewing |
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Investigate vocabulary typical of extended and more academic texts and the role of abstract nouns, classification, description and generalisation in building specialised knowledge through language (VCELA371) |
How and Why Do We Persuade? |
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Use prior knowledge and text processing strategies to interpret a range of types of texts (VCELY377) |
How and Why Do We Persuade? |
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Understand and explain how the text structures and language features of texts become more complex in informative and persuasive texts and identify underlying structures such as taxonomies, cause and effect, and extended metaphors (VCELA369) |
How and Why Do We Persuade? The Structure and Features of Persuasive Texts |
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English: Writing |
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Understand the use of punctuation to support meaning in complex sentences with prepositional phrases and embedded clauses (VCELA381) |
Creating Persuasive Sentences |
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Recognise and understand that subordinate clauses embedded within noun groups/phrases are a common feature of written sentence structures and increase the density of information (VCELA382) |
Creating Persuasive Sentences |
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Understand that the coherence of more complex texts relies on devices that signal text structure and guide readers, for example overviews, initial and concluding paragraphs and topic sentences, indexes or site maps or breadcrumb trails for online texts (VCELA380) |
The Structure and Features of Persuasive Texts |
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Understand how modality is achieved through discriminating choices in modal verbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns (VCELA383) |
Modality and Meaning |
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English: Speaking and Listening |
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Identify and explore ideas and viewpoints about events, issues and characters represented in texts drawn from different historical, social and cultural contexts (VCELT393) |
How and Why Do We Persuade? The Structure and Features of Persuasive Texts Creating Persuasive Sentences |
The sequence can be used to assess student achievement in relation to the following Achievement Standards from the Victorian Curriculum: English Level 7:
- Students understand how text structures can influence the complexity of a text and are dependent on audience, purpose and context.
- Students demonstrate understanding of how the choice of language features, images and vocabulary affects meaning.
- Students understand how the selection of a variety of language features can influence an audience.
- Students create texts showing how language features, text structures, and images from other texts can be combined for effect.
- Students demonstrate understanding of grammar, use a variety of more specialised vocabulary, use accurate spelling and punctuation.
Level 8
This sequence addresses content from the Victorian Curriculum in English. It is primarily designed for Level 7, but also addresses the following content descriptions from Level 8:
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Content description |
Stage |
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English: Reading and Viewing |
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Analyse how the text structures and language features of persuasive texts, including media texts, vary according to the medium and mode of communication (VCELA398) |
How and Why Do We Persuade? |
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Understand how cohesion in texts is improved by strengthening the internal structure of paragraphs through the use of examples, quotations and substantiation of claims (VCELA399) |
The Structure and Features of Persuasive Texts |
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Analyse and examine how effective authors control and use a variety of clause structures, including clauses embedded within the structure of a noun group/phrase or clause (VCELA400) |
Creating Persuasive Sentences The Structure and Features of Persuasive Texts |
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Recognise that vocabulary choices contribute to the specificity, abstraction and style of texts (VCELA401) |
How and Why Do We Persuade? |
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English: Writing |
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Understand how coherence is created in complex texts through devices like lexical cohesion, ellipsis, grammatical theme and text connectives (VCELA414) |
The Structure and Features of Persuasive Texts |
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Understand the use of punctuation conventions, including colons, semicolons, dashes and brackets in formal and informal texts (VCELA415) |
Creating Persuasive Sentences |
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English: Speaking and Listening |
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Share, reflect on, clarify and evaluate opinions and arguments about aspects of literary texts (VCELT425) |
How and Why Do We Persuade? The Structure and Features of Persuasive Texts Creating Persuasive Sentences |
The sequence can be used to assess student achievement in relation to the following Achievement Standards from the Victorian Curriculum: English Level 8:
- Students explain how language features, images and vocabulary are used to represent different ideas and issues in texts.
- Students understand how the selection of language features can be used for particular purposes and effects.
- Students explain the effectiveness of language choices they use to influence the audience.
- Students create texts for different purposes selecting language to influence audience response.
- Students demonstrate understanding of grammar, select vocabulary for effect and use accurate spelling and punctuation.
Learning Progressions
The Literacy Learning Progressions support teachers to develop a comprehensive view of how literacy develops over time. You can use the Literacy Learning Progressions to:
- identify the literacy capability of your students
- plan targeted teaching strategies, especially for students achieving above or below the age-equivalent expected level in the Victorian Curriculum: English
- provide targeted feedback to students about their learning within and across the progressions.
The Literacy Learning Progressions have been mapped against the Victorian Curriculum F – 10: English. Teachers are advised to familiarise themselves with this map to understand how particular progression relate to the Reading and Viewing, Writing and Speaking and Listening modes and particular curriculum levels in English.